Facebook To College Students: Hey There! We've Missed You

Facebook is paying attention to college students
again. And not just because the fall semester is about to start.

It's sometimes easy to forget that the network was originally
designed just for undergrads (Harvard kids first, then other Ivy
Leaguers, and eventually even the unwashed masses at state
schools). That's because of big moves -- like opening up the
network to anyone with an e-mail address -- and little ones --
removing course listings from user profiles. But over the last
couple of weeks, the network has been reaching out to its core
audience again. This time its via college-focused apps it is
supporting, either directly or indirectly, and which have been
generating a lot of buzz.

CourseFeed: This app, which creates a page for each of your
courses, won a grant from the Facebook-administed fbFund.
It lets students use the page to share notes with classmates,
and link up to their schools' online content system (where
professors will post assignments, notes, announcements, etc.)
with the CourseFeed page.

PodClass: Another fbFund winner. This app allows people to
record a class and post it on Facebook. The courses can be
posted by anybody, but students and professors could be a big
market for this app if it takes off.

Schools: Inigral, the company that makes this app, is
approaching colleges to get them to integrate their student
data to into Facebook profiles -- while getting the schools to
pay a few bucks per student for the right to do it. This app
was funded by the Founders Fund, which is one of the VC firms
that is backing the fbFund, and home of former Facebook exec
Sean Parker.

Facebook still needs to work at growing its international
audience, while handling an influx of mainstream users that are
just coming to the social network for the first time. But college
students remain the network's core. If it doesn't do a good job
of engaging them, someone else will.